MacMillan's Reading Books eBook

And plant fresh laurels when they kill = even
by the death they spread around them in war, they
may win new laurel-wreaths by victory.

Purple. As stained with blood.]

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GROWTH OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

Various improvements in the system of jurisprudence,
and administration of justice, occasioned a change
in manners, of great importance and of extensive effect.
They gave rise to a distinction of professions; they
obliged men to cultivate different talents, and to
aim at different accomplishments, in order to qualify
themselves for the various departments and functions
which became necessary in society. Among uncivilized
nations there is but one profession honourable, that
of arms. All the ingenuity and vigour of the
human mind are exerted in acquiring military skill
or address. The functions of peace are few and
simple, and require no particular course of education
or of study as a preparation for discharging them.
This was the state of Europe during several centuries.
Every gentleman, born a soldier, scorned any other
occupation; he was taught no science but that of war;
even his exercises and pastimes were feats of martial
prowess. Nor did the judicial character, which
persons of noble birth were alone entitled to assume,
demand any degree of knowledge beyond that which such
untutored soldiers possessed. To recollect a
few traditionary customs which time had confirmed,
and rendered respectable; to mark out the lists of
battle with due formality; to observe the issue of
the combat; and to pronounce whether it had been conducted
according to the laws of arms, included everything
that a baron, who acted as a judge, found it necessary
to understand.

But when the forms of legal proceedings were fixed,
when the rules of decision were committed to writing,
and collected into a body, law became a science, the
knowledge of which required a regular course of study,
together with long attention to the practice of courts.
Martial and illiterate nobles had neither leisure
nor inclination to undertake a task so laborious,
as well as so foreign from all the occupations which
they deemed entertaining, or suitable to their rank.
They gradually relinquished their places in courts
of justice, where their ignorance exposed them to
contempt. They became, weary of attending to the
discussion of cases, which grew too intricate for them
to comprehend. Not only the judicial determination
of points which were the subject of controversy, but
the conduct of all legal business and transactions,
was committed to persons trained by previous study
and application to the knowledge of law. An order
of men, to whom their fellow-citizens had daily recourse
for advice, and to whom they looked up for decision